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Read Ebook: General Bramble by Maurois Andr Boswell Ronald Translator Castier Jules Translator
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Ebook has 384 lines and 26149 words, and 8 pages
untries in which fine gardens were to be found, and he told the story of the American who asked the secret of those well-mown lawns and was answered, "Nothing is simpler: water them for twelve hundred years."
Then he inquired timidly whether he also might not be quartered at the ch?teau.
"It wouldn't do very well, sir; Madame is mortally afraid of new-comers, and she has a right, being a widow, to refuse to billet you."
"Aurelle, my boy, do be a good fellow, and go and arrange matters."
After much complaining, Madame de Vaucl?re consented to put the colonel up: all her sons were officers, and she could not withstand sentimental arguments for very long.
The next day Parker's orderly joined the doctor's in the ch?teau kitchen, and together they annexed the fireplace. To make room for their own utensils, they took down a lot of comical little French articles, removed what they saw no use for, put the kettle on, and whistled hymns as they filled the cupboards with tins of boot polish in scientifically graded rows.
After adoring them on the first day, putting up with them on the second, and cursing them on the third, the old cook came up to Aurelle with many lamentations, and dwelt at some length on the sad state of her saucepans; but she found the interpreter dealing with far more serious problems.
Colonel Parker, suddenly realizing that it was inconvenient for the general to be quartered away from his Staff, had decided to transfer the whole H.Q. to the ch?teau of Vaucl?re.
"Explain to the old lady that I want a very good room for the general, and the billiard-room for our clerks."
"Why, it's impossible, sir; she has no good room left."
"What about her own?" said Colonel Parker.
Madame de Vaucl?re, heart-broken, but vanquished by the magic word "General," which Aurelle kept on repeating sixty times a minute, tearfully abandoned her canopied bed and her red damask chairs, and took refuge on the second floor.
Meanwhile the drawing-room with its ancient tapestries was filled with an army of phlegmatic clerks occupied in heaping up innumerable cases containing the history in triplicate of the Division, its men, horses, arms and achievements.
"Maps" set up his drawing-board on a couple of arm-chairs; "Intelligence" concealed their secrets in an Aubusson boudoir; and the telephone men sauntered about in the dignified, slow, bantering fashion of the British workman. They set up their wires in the park, and cut branches off the oaks and lime trees; they bored holes in the old walls, and, as they wished to sleep near their work they put up tents on the lawns.
This methodical work of destruction had been going on for about a week when "Intelligence" got going.
"Intelligence" was represented at the Division by Captain Forbes.
"Do you know," he said to him, "there are most dangerous things going on here. Two old women are constantly being seen in this ch?teau. What the deuce are they up to?"
"What do you mean?" gasped Aurelle. "This is their house, sir; it's Madame de Vaucl?re and her maid."
"Well, you go and tell them from me to clear out as soon as possible. The presence of civilians among a Staff cannot be tolerated; the Intelligence people have complained about it, and they are perfectly right."
"But where are they to go to, sir?"
"That's no concern of mine."
Aurelle turned round furiously and left the room. Coming across Dr. O'Grady in the park, he asked his advice about the matter.
"Why, doctor, she had a perfect right to refuse to billet us, and from a military point of view we should certainly be better off at Nieppe. She was asked to do us a favour, she grants it, and her kindness is taken as a reason for her expulsion! I can't 'evacuate her to the rear,' as Forbes would say; she'd die of it!"
Dr. O'Grady's prescription was carried out in detail by Aurelle with most satisfactory results.
"You are right," said the colonel, "Forbes is a damned idiot. The old lady can stay on, and if anybody annoys her, let her come to me."
"It's all these servants who are such a nuisance to her, sir," said Aurelle. "It's very painful for her to see her own house turned upside-down."
"Upside-down?" gasped the colonel. "Why, the house is far better kept than it was in her time. I have had the water in the cisterns analysed; I have had sweet-peas planted and the tennis lawn rolled. What can she complain of?"
In the well-appointed kitchen garden, where stout-limbed pear trees bordered square beds of sprouting lettuce, Aurelle joined O'Grady.
"Doctor, you're a great man, and my old lady is saved. But it appears she ought to thank her lucky stars for having placed her under the British Protectorate, which, in exchange for her freedom, provides her with a faultless tennis lawn and microbeless water."
"There is nothing," said the doctor gravely, "that the British Government is not ready to do for the good of the natives."
THE TOWER OF BABEL
"Des barques romaines, disais-je.--Non, disais-tu, portugaises."--Jean Giraudoux.
"Wot you require, sir," interrupted Private Brommit, "is a glass o' boilin' 'ot milk an' whisky, with lots o' cinnamon."
Aurelle, who was suffering from an attack of influenza, was at Estr?es, under the care of Dr. O'Grady, who tirelessly prescribed ammoniated quinine.
"I say, doctor," said the young Frenchman, "this is a drug that's utterly unknown in France. It seems strange that medicines should have a nationality."
"Why shouldn't they?" said the doctor. "Many diseases are national. If a Frenchman has a bathe after a meal, he is stricken with congestion of the stomach and is drowned. An Englishman never has congestion of the stomach."
"No," said Aurelle; "he is drowned all the same, but his friends say he had cramp, and the honour of Britain is saved."
Private Brommit knocked at the door and showed in Colonel Parker, who sat down by the bed and asked Aurelle how he was getting on.
"I am glad to hear that," replied the colonel, "because I shall want you, Aurelle. G.H.Q. is sending me on a mission for a fortnight to one of your Brittany ports; I am to organize the training of the Portuguese Division. I have orders to take an interpreter with me. I thought of you for the job."
"But," Aurelle put in, "I don't know a word of Portuguese."
"What does that matter?" said the colonel. "You're an interpreter, aren't you? Isn't that enough?"
The following day Aurelle told his servant to try and find a Portuguese in the little town of Estr?es.
"Brommit is an admirable fellow," said Colonel Parker, "he found whisky for me in the middle of the bush, and quite drinkable beer in France. If I say to him, 'Don't come back without a Portuguese,' he is sure to bring one with him, dead or alive."
As a matter of fact, that very evening he brought back with him a nervous, talkative little man.
"Ze Poortooguez in fifteen days," exclaimed the little man, gesticulating freely with his small plump hands "A language so rich, so flexible, in fifteen days! Ah, you have ze luck, young man, to 'ave found in zis town Juan Garretos, of Portal?gre, Master of Arts of ze University of Coimbra, and positivist philosopher. Ze Poortooguez in fifteen days! Do you know at least ze Low Latin? ze Greek? ze Hebrew? ze Arabic? ze Chinese? If not, it is useless to go furzer."
Aurelle confessed his ignorance.
"What's that?" Aurelle interrupted. "I thought you had just had a democratic revolution."
Having thus earned his ten francs by an hour's unceasing eloquence, he made a fairer proposal to Aurelle next day.
"I will arrange with you for a fixed sum," he said. "If I teach you two souzand words, you give me fifty francs."
"Very well," replied Aurelle, "two thousand words will be a sufficient vocabulary to begin with."
Major Baraquin was a very old soldier. He had seen service--in the 1870 campaign. All strangers, Allies included, inspired him with a distrust which even his respect for his superiors failed to remove. When the French War Office ordered him to place his barracks at the disposal of a British colonel, discipline required him to obey, but hostile memories inspired him with savage resistance.
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